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The Internet Your Rights Online

.edu Expansion Blurs The Lines 30

Posted by timothy from the what-about-primary-and-elementary dept.
klaricmn writes "Yahoo is reporting that the US Department of Commerce has decided to ease the regulations that govern the administration of .edu domain names. Read the official release on the Educause site. This change would allow a for-profit training institution such as "Dawn's Beauty School" to apply for a domain name in the same TLD as Harvard or Yale."
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.edu Expansion Blurs The Lines More

.edu Expansion Blurs The Lines

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  • ...or do I see a "Bubba's School for Making Porn" getting bubba-pr0n-school.edu right around the corner?

    Then again, I think all schools of higher learning are for-profit. Some just know how to spend every bit of it so they don't actually have to report earning anything.


    • > ...or do I see a "Bubba's School for Making Porn" getting bubba-pr0n-school.edu right around the corner?

      Inspired by your post, I'm going to found a school called Prestigious Occupations in Registered Nursing. I've already reserved porn.edu, and since I'm still drumming up funding for the school I created a placeholder site full of pictures of nurses ministering to their patients, their doctors, and sometimes even each other.

      Don't be alarmed if you have to pay to view the placeholder site; that's just a way of raising more money for this good cause.

    • ...I think all schools of higher learning are for-profit....
      Most are. But some companies like the University of Phoenix [university...mpuses.com] are for-profit. Right now they have a dot-com domain. Will that be changing soon, I wonder?
      • Actually UoP has several domain names, but they primarly use

        uophx.edu and phoenix.edu.

        Student email address are

        studentname@email.uophx.edu

        So UoP is already full EDU. No changes here.

        JON
      • I know about UoP, I almost registered with them (the bastards had the nerve to call me at work!) last year as a way for me to go to college and still work the hours I was working.

        As for schools being for-profit, unless your a K-12 school, it doesn't pay to be a public college. Look at the budget problems my state (Tennessee) is having, causing the U's to talk about raising tuition. It just makes good business sense to be for profit in the education sector.

        Granted, I also don't expect the government to take care of everything, either. It's just not possible anymore (if it ever was).

  • why? (Score:2)

    by kruetz ( 642175 )
    Just great - the .edu domain had a clear, well-defined and widely-known purpose. And this is no longer the case...

    Why couldn't for-profit organisations like "Dawn's Beauty School" use the .biz domain (like Australia) or even the .com. If there isn't a .biz TLD (I don't know, can'tbe bothered googling) then there should be. OR they should be forced to use something like .biz.us instead.

    <rant>
    But WTF (WhyTF) should they use .us? No-one uses it because ... fuckit, it's been said so many times.
    </rant>

    But things like "Dawn's Beauty School" aren't global - their services are only open to those in the US, so they shouldn't use a TLD. But that won't stop them anyway.

    If they're for-profit, they should be considered a business or commercial entity, NOT an educational entity. For-profit and education aren't entirely disjoint (no philosophical debates, please) but the .edu domain shouldn't be used like this.

    BTW, sorry for going OT like that - must be the caffeinated <jitter> M&Ms or something <jitter>. Oh well, mod me OT if you must.

    • Re:why? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kruetz ( 642175 )

      Okay, I missed the first paragraph of the article - I don't see why distance-learning and theological schools shouldn't have been allowed to have .edu domains before. But check out this quote:

      "Somebody who goes six months to a beauty school, I would not consider in the same league as somebody who's even been two years at a community college," said Ralph Meyer, a retired administrator at Princeton University. "There's too much dumbing down already."

      Wow! I guess this ex-administrator from Princeton believes that a person's academic background is typically ranked by whether the place of education had a .edu domain.

      I don't think it should be about "two years at a community college" - it's not for places competing with colleges/universities - it's for places that provide you with an education. I'm not religious, but theological schools shouldn't have been blocked before. Likewise, is distance learning somehow inferior to Princeton? Not necessarily. You can still go to Princeton or some other "four-year institution or community college" and end up gaining very little.

    • Simple (Score:4, Funny)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @12:42AM (#5285826) Journal
      Almost all the major DNS-related shifts in the last few years (addition of more TLDs being the most recent previous change) have been pushed by the registrars, and are designed not to drive technical improvement, but to sell more domains.

      All that happened is that someone figured out that instead of just having a little checkbox for "also buy foo.net and foo.org" when you register "foo.com", "foo.edU" could be added into the mix.

    • Re:why? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Lutherx ( 575245 )
      If they're for-profit, they should be considered a business or commercial entity, NOT an educational entity.

      I'm trying not to be philosophical, but with Harvard's endowment valued at around $18.3 billion, I do wonder where the line is drawn. That is an awfully large pot of money for a school to be sitting on.

      I know it used for good things, but still I'm not sure why we should be so anti Dawn and her Beauty School...

  • Blah! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @12:04AM (#5285693) Homepage Journal
    In 1993 - 1994, they used to let secondary schools and in some cases even elementary schools and middle schools register .edu domains. If they open it up to vocational institutions, they also should open it up to the legitimate primary and secondary schools they took it away from before.

    Even better, they ought to move the k12 subdomain to .edu and create a lot more subdomains for .edu to handle this kind of stuff.. Training institutions and other vocational schools can get a domain in .voc.edu after a certain amount of time or whatnot, other schools can register in elem.edu or somesuch..

  • That doesn't help me! (Score:3, Funny)

    by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <slashdot AT stefanco DOT com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @01:17AM (#5285944) Homepage Journal
    This change would allow a for-profit training institution such as "Dawn's Beauty School" to apply for a domain name in the same TLD as Harvard or Yale.

    Damn! That doesn't help me! I run "Yale's Beauty College" and yale.edu is already taken!

    Sue sue, I'm gonna sue somebody!

  • My Possibly Stupid Question (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @01:35AM (#5286012) Homepage
    Why should I care about this? Is there some risk that a potential student is going to get confused and type in www.dawnsbeautyschool.edu instead of www.princeton.edu [princeton.edu]?

    I admit that I'm not an networking engineer, so maybe there's some very complex technical issue I'm missing here. If so, enlighten me.

    If the only argument against it are schools previously in the .edu domain feeling like their domain is cheapened, I say get over it. Unless there's obvious abuse like someone registering prindeton.com and trying to pass themselves off as being Princeton University, there's no issue - and that issue would seem entirely separate from which TLD the site is in.

    If Dawn's Beauty School is teaching its students something ( edu cating them), then they would seem to have just as strong a claim to having an .edu domain - which to a lay person who hasn't read the docs on the origins/requirements of TLDs just means "school" - as Princeton, Yale, Reed or Oregon State. Elitists should take a pill.

    • Why should I care about this?

      I think you're missing the point. The TLDs were setup to delimit different kinds of organizations. For this reason educational, government, organizational, and commercial institutions are given seperate namespaces.

      Consider an relating it to the way phone books are organized. There is a white pages, yellow pages, and that little section of blue pages for government offices. Imagine not having color coding on the pages anymore and ALL organizations in one big book. You are right, the internet would still work; however, it's much easier to find things if they are organized appropriately.

  • Stupify (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Quixotic Raindrop ( 443129 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @01:52AM (#5286071) Journal
    EDUcation TLDs. Chartered, for 4-year degree granting institutions.

    COMmercial TLDs. Chartered, for commercial businesses.

    NETwork TLDs. Chartered, for Network entities.

    ORGanizations TLDs. Chartered, for non-profit organizations.

    MILitary TLDs. Chartered, for Military activities.

    If you don't like those divisions, use a separate TLD provider ...

    What? There are no separate TLD providers?

    What moron came up with that idea?

    And ICANN's monopoly is being extended? Lemme guess, Bush had something to do with that ...

    • Re:Stupify (Score:3, Informative)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 )
      ORGanizations TLDs. Chartered, for non-profit organizations.

      From RFC 1591:

      ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-government organizations may fit here.


      It doesn't say anything about non-profit in there.

      The uses for the TLDs were specifically defined. They mean what the RFC says they mean and not what you decided they should mean.

      What? There are no separate TLD providers?

      The TLDs are not all administered by the same entity. ICANN is authorised to award the contracts to manage any particular TLD, but the contracts are presently held by a variety of companies. In fact, the number of companies controlling TLDs is increasing, since Verisign is loosing controll of both the .net and .org TLDs by 2006.

      Before you go blaming people for problems, make sure the problems exist.
    • Man, my alarm clock went off late this morning. I suspect Bush had something to do with that.

      Then there was this dead groundhog on the side of the road on the way in. It's an oil conspiracy, I tell you.

      Then I have to read leftist conspiracy commments on Slashdot. Crap, I bet this is all really Cheney's doing. No, scratch that, it's Carl Rove, Evil Genius(tm)!

      Seriously, though, I know I'm just feeding the troll, but is Bush:
      • (a) Dumber than whale piss, -or-
      • (b) Mastermind of hundreds of evil government conspiracies?
      I hear the political opposition claiming both, but it's really the sort of thing where the choices are mutually exclusive.
  • For profit institutions already have .edu domains. Just look at DeVry [devry.edu] and ITT Tech [itt-tech.edu].

  • It would be nice of .us were useful. (Score:3, Funny)

    by anon mouse-cow-aard ( 443646 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @07:59AM (#5286778) Journal
    The British did it right (japanese and aussie's at least followed.) with .co.uk, .ac.uk (yes there is an entire second level domain for anonymous cowards.)

    It would be great if, local companies would use: .com.us , .edu.us, etc...

    And transitioned .com and other TLD's to purely inter/multi-national usage.
  • Harvard was allowed to register harvarduniversity.com, so why not allow Dell to register LamestInternsEver.edu?

    (Don't those stupid intern commercials make you wish they'd bring the Dell Dude back?)

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